 All right, cool. All good? All right, I'm going to talk about how to choose a WordPress hosting company. It's just a few slides so we won't take too long and we pretty much should all come to the same conclusion that you spend money to make money, right? So this is a very famous quote that I made up this afternoon. So hosting is the backbone for your website. It's something you need to get right, right? We're going to talk about what is WordPress hosting, then we're going to talk about do you need WordPress hosting, essentially yes, how to choose the best WordPress host, how to figure out if that fits within your requirements, and then I'll give a couple of recommendations. Like I said to the guys before, could I just come up here and give my affiliate link and then just kind of leave it at that, but I would need to add some padding around it. So WordPress hosting, essentially we need web hosting to host anything on the web. So cloud hosting, server hosting, free hosting back in when I was first starting out. So essentially it's service space in the cloud or on a server somewhere where your website lives. So WordPress hosting is typically like a PHP, a Lemp or a Lemp stack, which is typically Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Or you might use Nginx or something like that, and that would be a Lemp stack. So you need to make sure that the stack that you're using is using updated tech. I took over a few sites. So I run a WordPress agency here. I took over a few sites recently that were running PHP 5, PHP 5.4, PHP 5.6, and these are all installs that had like 20, 30 plugins that hadn't been updated in ever as well. So you want to make sure that first off the company that you're using is investing in technology. I've taken over a number of sites that are just really outdated, and you can't actually upgrade them because they've been bought, you know, 2005, 2015 even, and they're just stuck on that stack. So the company itself, the WordPress hosting company or the standard cPanel hosting company is not actually upgrading that stack anymore. So you kind of stuck on that. So you want to avoid those type of companies where you don't have control over controlling your stack. So something like PHP 5.6, which was end of life two years ago versus PHP 7.3, 7.4, you're looking around sort of 60% improvement in just PHP handling just through that upgrade. And, you know, two years on from PHP 7, everything should be compatible. And if it's not, then you probably need more development work anyway. There's a little bit of confusion around sort of WordPress and WordPress hosting. So hopefully most people here on the WordPress.org self installation version, which means that yes, you do need some type of WordPress hosting. So you can go to WordPress.com, sign up and get started straight away. That's not really any hosting. WordPress handles everything for you. You can upgrade your server, then pay the business level, install a couple of themes and install some couple of premium plugins as well. It's not really what we're talking about today. But if you do have a WordPress.org install, then you need hosting. And is it worth it? Yes, it is. So managed WordPress hosting. So typically there's a couple of, there's about five that I'll go through, but there's really two players in the market. There's essentially like a shared hosting company, which is your typical, well up until late last year, Cpanel hosting company. Let me use Plex as well. And what they'll do is they'll chuck maybe a hundred, a thousand sites on one server, and they'll resell you for three to four or five dollars a month. And they'll just chuck you on there, right? So managed WordPress hosting is essentially shared as well. But you get optimized WordPress, an optimized WordPress stack. So you won't be on a thousand. You might be on a couple of hundred. But you know, you're not competing. It's Joomla. You're not competing against just a generic stack. Everything that they install is WordPress based. So they typically have their own caching and their own backup plugins and things like that as well. So there's kind of four factors as well as the stack that you need to look out for. So first one would be speed. Like Robert mentioned, these kind of server load times are typically on a site that would be a fresh install. If you can get a site loading 60 plugins under 300 milliseconds, then you're doing really well. But typically you'll be looking at sort of your time to first byte is around 300 milliseconds. And you can do run tests on this as well. Uptime, I mean, uptime problems with hosts aren't really that much of a thing anymore. Most hosts are around 98, 99%. So it's not a huge thing, but you can research and find out. I mean, this is probably a problem 10 years ago, where people were really having problems with uptime where your website would go down for three to four days while they upgraded their PHP stack or something like that. Or they just had 500 errors that they couldn't fix. But that, yes. Another thing that's probably most important in the experience nowadays is customer service. So do they have a live chat? I used the company a couple of years ago, which for the moment will be nameless. They recently are brought out by a recommended company of mine. They had a really good Google server in Singapore, which I really liked and attracted me to using them. They didn't have live chat, they had email support, but it was they only have staff in Ohio. And they still actually only have staff in Ohio. But so their response time is around 12 hours. They also restricted the use of some of the functions. So you couldn't access your HT access, you can access WP config at all. So you'd have to go straight to them for that. So if I was trying to launch a site in Singapore time, it would take a long time for that to happen. So I launched three sites with them. They I moved them all pretty much the next day. So one thing you can do as well is sort of when you're doing pre sales or when you're investigating these people, as to be a hosting company is really check and make sure they know their stuff. I throw them a few questions in their sales and pre sales. Because then you get an idea of how available they will be when you actually need them. And then investigate your needs as well. So if you're just launching a personal blog that you might post once a month, once every six months, you probably don't need to be spending $100 or $35 US dollars or something like that on hosting. A shared host would probably work for you. But if you're looking to monetize your website or monetize anything e-commerce or looking at advertising or just really look to get something back from your website, then you need a bit more features than just a typical shared hosting provider would be able to provide you. So there's a couple of things that we can work out in terms of what you guys need. But so mentioned before, shared hosting is pretty much what I guess, let's say eight out of 10 people in here would probably be using Site Ground. They'll be using a local provider Vodian or someone like that. And like I said, they'll stack a whole bunch of servers in the data center here in Singapore and SingTel. And they'll just chuck on as many as they can onto that server. A sort of related but unrelated story to this is actually this week I had a client of mine email me, well, what's at me, like eight o'clock at night, all his 12 websites had gone down. So I checked it out the next morning, we spoke to Site Ground who were the host of a VPS with them. And they were actually, so over the past two years, they've been sending out 3000 emails per day from this shared server, well VPS shared server. And that day on Tuesday, they sent out eight and a half thousand. So what that means is, so for Site Ground, they're obviously reselling that virtual private server to maybe 10 to 15 other clients. If this client sends out 8000 emails and 7900 of them get classified as spam, that everybody else on that server as well gets tied with the same brush. So your email deliverability, if you're using that, would go down. So that's something that they need to protect as well. So there are some pretty harsh limits on shared providers. And that's why they can offer them for, you know, three to four to five dollars per month as well. And they kind of don't invest as much in tech as they will. And, you know, shared providers are typically going for the whole market. So you could run an HTML site, you run just any PHP site or WordPress or Juma or Drupal or anything on that. So where managed WordPress hosting is kind of where I see most value. It's going to cost you a bit more, but they offer a lot more value in terms of your hosting experience. So their whole network would just be WordPress. I've had some times where I've just wanted to put up some PHP code or some HTML code and a subdomain. And a lot of time that's not even possible, just because it doesn't work with their stack. So it's WordPress only, and it's usually paid per install. So if you have one install, it will cost you X amount per month. If you want a second install, there'll be a discounted rate. But it's typically based on the amount of installs that you have across that. So yes, it's more expensive, but you will get things like one click backups. You get them to automate your WordPress updates, your core updates for the most part. If we're talking about a couple of companies, they'll actually do hack prevention for you as well. If you do get hacked, they'll restore the website for you and fix those hacks. So free SSL certificates kind of everywhere nowadays, but the managed WordPress hosting were kind of the first people to sort of roll that into their stack. And also, because they're WordPress, they're following the WordPress guidelines, so minimum of PHP 7, so they're upgrading the whole stack to go along with that. WordPress VPS hosting is probably more from an agency perspective. It's, you can get started on your own by setting up your own install, something like Cloudways or upCloud or there's a whole bunch of them run Cloud and things where you would essentially set up your own server, do the WordPress install and manage that yourself. So if you're a little bit techie, then you can save a lot of money by doing it this way. But if something goes wrong, you typically only have a help forum to really rely on. So using someone like Cloudways, they act as sort of a go-between. They will do the Digital Ocean or the Volta or the Node setup for you. And then you just kind of use them. They won't give you WordPress help, whereas someone like a managed WordPress host would actually go in and say, okay, I can find some errors with your theme. That's why this plugin is not working. Should I move it to a staging server and fix that out? So they've actually provided a little bit more value directly related to WordPress because it's all they have to train their staff on as well. And then dedicated server hosting as well. So this plays against as well in the VPS space and probably in the managed space as well. Not many people are actually going to a data center provider and buying their own server. You can, it used to be a little bit more prevalent, I guess sort of five to ten years ago, where you could actually just buy a physical box in a space, fill that with whatever you need and that's just your own specific box. So if you are looking at I've got a couple of dedicated servers myself for different clients. So one I have is a HIPAA compliant client which means that all medical data needs to flow through one channel. So only sits in this one server which is, you know, firewalled off. So there are some requirements that do meet that but typically not. And I was kind of amazed but there are still some free providers out there. I remember when I first started, this is going back a very long time now, when we were building free websites on, I mean GeoCities and free that is like another free one as well. So they would kind of just put ads on your website and you got service space for it. There are some, still free WordPress ones but I don't recommend it. You better off to find a cheap shared host and actually worry about free hosting because you're going to hurt your visitors at the end of the day. So if you are running a high traffic site then definitely look at hosting or VPS hosting or managed WordPress hosting. Depends how technical you are in terms of managing your server. It can be very nice to look at AWS and say look it's really cheap I can probably get a server of two to three dollars a month setting that all up but then how much time is it going to cost you and actually managing that. Especially like installing SSL certificates and configuring permissions and things like that. So they'll do all that for you. And a good WordPress hosting company wants you to do, oh it's going, alright. So a good WordPress hosting company prioritizes your website and they want to make sure that you're doing well as well because obviously you'll refer them but it also does wonders for their traffic. So at Bedwood, WordPress hosting company essentially doesn't care. You're just another number and if you think about you know you're paying someone two to five dollars per month they're paying X amount of support staff. How much time and effort can they actually give an individual customer for that amount that you're paying fifty dollars per year. So most hosting companies will give you some type of free trial and sometimes a free migration of your site as well. So what you can do is set up like a staging server. You can set that up. It might just be demo.websitename.com. You can move your whole website to them. You can optimize that as you see fit and then you can test the two current website versus old website and then you can see if that's going to work for you or not and then just cancel after that. Usually it's two weeks, 30 days. So you can kind of test that against each other and they will be happy to do to prove their service versus somebody else as well and it gives you a chance of actually testing their technical capabilities and their customer support at the same time. So in my advice the best kind of value that you can get is managed WordPress hosting because the whole stack is really built about the platform that you're using and trying to monetize again. So especially in terms of security and flexibility that's sort of my recommendation anyway. If we are going to look at a couple of players in this in this space, SiteGround have data centers in Singapore, Bluehost are looking to get into the region in Singapore. They're typically US based but they do have the WordPress.org recommended hosting company. There are also sponsors of WordCamps around the world as well as a global sponsor. For managed WordPress hosting companies, WP Engine and Kinstar will be my two. WP Engine, who are used personally, their closest data center is Taiwan. Although they've just bought out Flywheel who's the company without live chat and they'll be kind of amalgamating the Google data center in the next couple of years. Kinstar have a Google data center. For VPS, Cloudways will sort of help you manage all this for you. So you sign up with Cloudways. They put a small percentage on top. They'll manage your whole stack for you. They'll provide server support but not WordPress support. So if something happens with your WordPress theme or your WordPress install, they used to provide support but not much anymore. And server pilot is pretty much the same. So that'll help you install WordPress. It'll help you set up different users if you are managing one server with two or three installs on it. And then if you're looking at sort of a dedicated or primary kind of VPSs, then you'd be looking at UpCloud or AWS. And UpCloud were a sponsor of us recently at our WordCamp here in Singapore and they have a small team here about 10 people. So I guess the only takeaways I have are really just to automate all the things. No, that's from another talk I gave about Zapier. But yeah, just make sure that you test everything out essentially. That they're using a new updated stack which is consistent with the WordPress.org recommendations and that they are sort of super willing. If you have to wait 20 minutes for live chat support, they don't have anyone in your region and they don't have enough staff on. So you'd be looking at sort of in a really busy time, around 10 minutes is probably a bit too much. But we're sort of lucky here that we are outside of the normal business hours. So typically we'll get night staff and things will be a little bit easier. But they were like I had a site the other day that had a whole bunch of issues. And they moved it to staging for me. They tested a whole bunch of things. It worked out it was a problem with the theme. But they did all that just kind of as part of their service rather than me digging around and doing it. So they will provide an extra level of support if you pay a little bit more for it. So if you're looking at someone like SiteGround. SiteGround you're probably paying well their pricing can be a little bit deceiving. The first year it's around three to four dollars. The second year it's about ten dollars on their basic plan. WP Engine about 30 USD per month. Kinster about 35 USD. Cloudways it depends on your server but around 10 to 12 dollars. And then dedicated it's cheaper but you spend more time in managing it. And that's it really unless there are any specific questions. So when was it? It was about four or five years ago. There's an insurance conglomerate that came out and bought ninety something percent of all the cheap shared hosting companies. And they kind of just decimated them all. I don't know if A2 is part of that but I think it was. Essentially they just commoditized the whole experience. All. So. Yeah so there's a few that are in that space but there used to be a lot more in. I wouldn't recommend it no. So I currently have a business. I'm growing regionally so I actually open different websites with different country. So these smaller sites are actually slowly growing but they don't have that much traffic at the moment. So what I did was I got a shared hosting and then I put like one or two sites in one. So if it's if it's. I mean if you were the webmaster how would you plan out how to grow in terms of managing the servers and websites. So yeah so if you're looking at buying cheap shared hosting so somewhere at Sitegrounds their basic plan I think is called the start up or something plan. They will only allow one website on their C-Pen or used to be C-Pen installed. They've just moved away. C-Pen was changed its pricing as of late last year. So you might find that some hosting providers are moving away from it. Either to their own system like Siteground or Plesk which is another similar version. There's your cloud host is scalable right. So if you're using Cloudways right for example with DigitalOcean. So using Siteground Cloud. 60 70 USD per month for two sites. It's hosting two sites at the moment but I have other smaller sites so I have one site in Hong Kong and one site in Taiwan. Yep. And I put them in the shared host at the moment. If you're talking about the Siteground one their cloud hosting isn't exactly shared it's kind of like a VPS server. So as long as your server specs are okay in terms of the RAM that the server is actually getting than CPU usage then you'll be okay. Is it scalable though? So let's say you have two sites there now. Yeah you could do you just test it right. More sites is obviously going to make your primary sites that you don't want ranking you know low. It's obviously going to make them slow right. So if you've got five installs and 25 plugins each one goes down it's going to affect the rest because they're not siloed. They're just CPL installs right. Depends how it's siloed yeah. If you can silo them off so that they don't if one goes bad then it doesn't affect the resources of all the others then yes. And that's what a Manitose would do. It's sort of a Manitose like Flywheel or WP Engine. Their agency plans are essentially yes the same server but they're very separate in terms of how you're the same as another customer even though they have two websites. There's a traditional C panel. It's one folder here one folder here. They're all competing against each other. So what I suggest you do is you request your post to provide you with the SNMP so that you can then map the CPU utilization memory utilization. And so what you need to do is to match sites that are complementary. So you may have a site that has a peak during the day and then you match it with another site that has a peak during the night. So collectively these two sites are maximizing your investment in the server. But they have all the same types. Even if they're in the same time zone a case could be made that they may be catering to different people around the world. So you never know. So the only way you can know is if you run SNMP you do the metrics. Or you can use something like New Relic as well which is the third-party API which will allow you to check server processes and things. Some managed providers will have additional services that you can use as well that allow you to dig down. I know WP Engine and a couple of others will have New Relic access. So if you see a query that's really bad on your site you can actually dig down and say okay this query is really slow and you can see that at a server level. So they'll provide you that diagnostic as well. So I pretty much move every client I can to it just because of the added value of if I go to SiteGround at the moment I think it's $12 this year then it's $20 next year. If I'm thinking about over two years I'm not really saving that much versus $30 and I'll get the addition of one click backups. I'll get the addition of staging servers. So WP Engine for example you can have three different installs. So you can run a demo or production and those are just one clicks as well. So for me I think the added benefit of having a managed host is more than just kind of $10 on price. So webpress.com right? So I haven't played in that space that much besides moving people away from it. Only because they only give you limited control. So if it fits you then I think it's okay but none times I pretend I need to be customizing the code which they only give a limited amount of support for. So for us it doesn't make sense for most of my clients and then we'll look at I don't know why I don't know much about their tech stack. I assume it's fine because they host you know millions of sites. Yeah. So a question here for the audience as well. How much of a premium would your clients be willing to pay for managed security as well? So with with WP Engine and other hosts they use a service called security. So security are probably kind of number one number two in WordPress security space. So they filter all their traffic through that firewall before it even gets to your server. So they'll manage all that for you. So even if my website on the managed WP gets hacked today they'll go and restore it or fix and clean the hack for me. How much is the service worth or how much extra do you pay for that service? If we're comparing SiteGroundLight which has they have a $1 add-on which could site something or other site security right? It's $1 per month. They will tell you what files are hacked but you still have to go through and do that install do that clean up yourself. So if that cleanup is going to cost you two hours of time let's say three four hundred dollars right? So like we're thinking of like you know automatic blocking of people that are attempting to do brute force. Yeah so that's all blocked with most managed providers whereas you could chuck Cloudflare on front of you know someone like SiteGround and they'll kind of bridge most of those gaps but you still have to do the cleanup yourself. Yeah I think so as well. I like my domain name with one company. I like my DNS with Cloudflare and then I like my hosting and email hosting with somebody else as well. So there's multiple points of failure. So if my website goes down my email is still running. Can I ask what email hosting? Depends. Typically G Suite but for free or low cost I'll use Zoho or Rackspace or more privacy conscious ones I'll use Rocketmail or Fastmail. Officer 365 if there are more in the office space as well. But yeah definitely separate them all as much as you can and Cloudflare is free and it's a pretty good DNS system as well if you want to chuck any things on. It'll happen really quickly. It offers like a really low cost or free CDN as well. Cool. All right I don't think there's anything else.